[Albion Plane, Porfield Kingdom, Rustfang Mountains, Highway road]
They attacked on the road an hour after the convoy finally, belatedly, set out.
The location was a narrow spot, where the road was squeezed between a sheer rock face and a precipitous drop.
Anya's arrow was the first signal. It took a soldier in the throat before he could even cry out. Then they were upon them.
"Ghosts, strike as lightning!" Jack's command was a whisper that carried.
Silas melted from the rocks, a dagger finding the heart of a second soldier.
Corin, with a feral shout, engaged two more, his sword a blur, engaging with them, but lacking the decisiveness displayed by Silas and Lyra which each took out a soldier in their ambush.
Jack's focus was on the knights. The woman, gracious and balanced, her movements slightly slowed by the poison. However, her face showed extreme composure. Likely, she was not your average knight.
[Name: Female Knight. Attributes: Strength - 1.8 (2.0) | Agility - 2.4 (2.7) | Vitality - 2.1 (2.3). Skills: (?). Status: Poisoned (-10% Physical attributes)]
The poison decreased her physical attributes by 10%. It might not seem like a lot, but in a life and death battle, it could decide between victory or defeat. Half a second was sometimes the only thing that decided the outcome of a duel.
"Brigands! Face the King's justice!", she roared, her voice echoing in the pass.
Jack didn't answer with words. His hand flickered. A throwing dagger, simple and unadorned, spun through the air.
It was not a heroic throw, not a mighty heave. It was economical, precise, vicious. It took the female knight by surprise, not expecting this. Her instincts were on point, dodging to the left, but it still hit her thigh.
[Technique Analyzed: Basic Dagger Art. Efficiency: 98%. Lethality: Medium. Threat Assessment of Jack: Critically Revised Upwards]
[Name: Female Knight. Attributes: Strength - 1.8 (2.0) | Agility - 1.2 (2.7) | Vitality - 2.1 (2.3). Skills: (?). Status: Poisoned (-10% Physical attributes), Wounded thigh (-50% agility)]
Seeing it work against a properly trained knight, Greem whistled inwardly. He needed to learn it.
But his thoughts were cut short.
The second knight, younger and less assured, stared in horror at his wounded comrade. His eyes then locked on Greem, who was advancing.
"You! You'll hang for this!"
Greem didn't bother with a reply. He raised his sword.
The knight charged, his technique solid, his strength still considerable despite the poison.
[Name: Male Knight. Attributes: Strength - 3.1 (3.5) | Agility - 1.1 (1.6) | Vitality - 2.2 (2.5). Skills: (?). Status: Poisoned (-10% Physical Attributes)]
Their blades met with a sharp clang. He was good, but he was not comparable to Ragnar. There was no overwhelming, brutal force. No unpredictable fury. There was strength in his strikes, unbelievably superior to what Greem could do. However, if he focused on deflecting the strikes rather than facing them blindly, this was a duel he could managed.
He deflected, dodged, and counter-attacked, his biochip feeding him constant data on the knight's patterns, his weight distribution, the tiny telegraphing of his moves. With poison, Greem's agility advantage showed. The knight was helpless, and the weight of his armour was grinding his stamina.
However, just as the knight was helpless against Greem, the latter could not hope to do anything. The heavy armour was beyond sturdy, probably made of Black Steel. His sword targeted the joints, but the knight always fell back on a defensive stance that made the duel...a proper draw.
However, this much suited Greem. He did not need any heroic action, or contribution. Stalling a knight by himself was already more than enough.
"How?", the knight shouted, "Who are you? Such swordsmanship...It does not belong to bandits!"
[Name: Male Knight. Attributes: Strength - 2.9 (3.5) | Agility - 1.0 (1.6) | Vitality - 1.8 (2.5). Skills: Axton Swordsmanship (53), Advanced Parry (30), ... Status: Poisoned (-10% Physical Attributes), Fatigued (Reduced Physical attributes)]
Greem recognised the Axton Swordsmanship, from the description of the book given to him by Kael. Each household possessed its own swordsmanship. Even the White Lion Swordsmanship, despite being called so, was mostly copied from the Valetta Household, the fallen family from which Alicia came from.
And Greem's swordsmanship was at an all-time-high 65 points of proficiency, far superior to the man's own skills.
The carriage door burst open. The Royal Mage stood there, his face a mask of terror and rage. He saw his soldiers falling. His own knights, who he had hired for the mission, were struggling against bandits. He raised his staff, and the air itself seemed to curdle.
"Ignis Cor!" he shrieked.
A sphere of condensed fire, the size of a man's head, bloomed at the tip of his staff. It was not a graceful, controlled spell. It was a desperate, violent eruption. It shot across the road towards Anya, who was nocking another arrow.
There was no time to dodge. The fireball struck her square in the chest. There was no scream, only a wet, concussive thump and a wave of searing heat. When the light faded, Lyra was gone. A charred, blackened stain on the rock and a few scraps of smoldering leather were all that remained.
[Spell Data Recorded: Designation - 'Fireball'. Energy Signature: High-Intensity Thermal/Concussive. Casting Time: 3.2 seconds. Vocal Component: 'Ignis Cor'. Lethality: Extreme. Data saved to database]
Horror froze Greem for a split second. Silas, baffled by the lethality of the spell, met the same fate, a sword taking him by surprise. It only took one second of shock for him to fall. The soldiers most likely did not witness this for the first time.
The mage was panting now, sweat pouring down his face. His arcane reservoir was clearly strained, but he had just killed one of the strongest archer of the stronghold.
The remaining two soldiers were still engaged with Corin. The knights were evenly matched with Jack and Greem.
The mage's eyes, wide with ruthlessness, scanned the scene. He began another chant, his staff swinging towards Greem and the knight. Greem positioned himself behind the knight, causing the mage to cancel the spell.
Over several exchanges, the mage began chants several times, but every time, the biochip would warn him.
[High elemental fire particles detected. Change positions immediately]
After a minute, Greem had gathered enough data. This was it. Trial and error was over.
Greem disengaged from the knight with a desperate shove, creating a sliver of space. He focused inward, on the complex runic structure of Medusa's Gaze that he had memorized, the pattern the biochip had seared into his mind.
He channelled his 2.4 points of arcane power, not with the finesse of a trained mage, but with the brute-force precision of a machine.
His vision tinged green. He felt a strange, cold pressure behind his eyes. He pointed his free hand, not at the mage, but at the knight who was recovering and lunging for him.
"Lapide Oculos!", the words felt alien and heavy on his tongue. He did not shout them. He whispered them.
There was no grand light show. A single eye contact was sufficient. The effect was instant and grotesque. The forearm and hand, yet covered in armour, turning into a mottled, lifeless grey. The texture changed from heavy black steel to to rough, cracked stone. The flesh within was undoubtedly petrified too.
The knight screamed, a high-pitched sound of pure terror, as his sword clattered to the ground, his petrified fingers frozen around the hilt.
The transformation stopped at his elbow, but the limb was dead weight, a statue attached to a living man.
It had worked.
Greem did not stop here. He kicked the petrified hand, cracking it in hundreds of fragment, evidently dismembering his opponent.
Kneeling in pain, the knight could not process what had just happened. Greem did not stop here, and used this single instant of surprise to plunge his sword in the helmet's single opening that provided vision to the knight. However, this opening allowed Greem to finish the duel.
In the mage's moment of stunned disbelief, Jack and Corin moved. Jack's second throwing dagger took the mage in the throat, cutting off any further incantation. Corin, with a furious cry, plunged his longsword into the man's chest. In the span of one minute, they had managed to kill their opponents and come to the rescue.
The wild, fire elemental particles that was channeling became free.
The fight was over, but so was the arcane channeled by the mage. The fireball exploded, burning Corin's face.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH", Corin shouted in agony
Greem stood panting, his body trembling not from exertion, but from the aftershock of channeling such power. He had cast a spell. A real, true spell.
Jack walked over to his son, paternal instinct taking over. Greem sighed in relief. It would have been difficult to explain the arm turning to stone. Fortunately he had been to drawn to his own fight against the female knight, and then his son's injury.
However, after a moment and seeing that his son was still alive, he turned his head to Greem.
"What are you waiting for? Go on. Let's take their valuables and go. The commotion will draw wild beasts, bandits and soldier patrols. The more time we waste, the more traces we leave for those diviners.
Jack was already moving, pulling anything that looked of value from the carriage. He then nodded to the mage's body.
"Your bonus, Greem. Inspect it. Quickly."
Greem didn't need to be told twice. He rifled through the mage's robes and the carriage, his biochip highlighting items of interest. He found a small, locked box that felt heavy with coin, a pouch of strange, glittering dust, and most importantly, four books bound in supple leather: Fundamentals of Spellcasting, A Primer on Magical Hex, Fireball Spell and the mage's personal journal.
He stuffed it all into his pack. Knowledge. Power. The risk had been astronomical, the cost in lives high.
Looking more closely, he found a hidden compartment in the carriage. There stood letters, goat skin and more importantly, coins. A lot of gold coins. Enough to hire a mercenary group as big as the White Lion Bandit Group for a year.
Not having enough time to count them all, Jack carried the chest and dragged his sobbing son to leave the mountains. Greem followed suit, in silence. Following Jack's orders, he put the bodies, including those of Silas and Lyra into the caravan and set it ablaze. Ashes would not give a lot of evidence. And while taking the black steel armour was appealing, Greem knew better than exposing himself to an organisation of mages with unknown tracking powers.
The hundreds of gold coins were already incriminating enough, but Jack would be smart not to use them straight away. Knowing him, this was probably the case.